Hell is a doctor's waiting room
It’s interesting what
you can observe while waiting to see the doctor. I was in the waiting room
yesterday amidst a group of people who were by no means exceptional (in
the sense that I don’t actually believe a malicious power assembled them
for the purpose of annoying me) but all of whom displayed such aggravating
abilities.
Firstly we have the huge woman. I have nothing against huge people. But I
did take against her. I first saw her when she emerged from the toilet.
The door opens outwards (presumably for disabled access) and she attempted
to close it with her feet. Yes feet. Plural. She kicked with the right
foot and the door merely collided with her left foot. She then flicked at
it with the left which did nothing for her cause. Then, quite independent
from her footwork, she belched rather loudly and her pride in this
expulsion gave her renewed confidence to return to the door. She hooked
her right leg around the door and swung it shut. I forget what she was
doing with her hands this whole time, it certainly wasn’t covering her
mouth.
There is a cunning system at our doctor’s where your name flashes up on a
board when it is your turn to be seen. The huge woman got up every single
time the buzzer went only to be tugged back down by her harassed looking
other half. She was sat right in front of the light board and seemed to be
starring at it. Maybe she thought she could Derren Brown the board and
make it say her name. Maybe she was just thick.
“Thick” is of course a subjective term. Intelligence is relative. There
are no doubt scholars by the millions who think I’m thick. There may even
be an elevated mind who could bestow the insult upon Sir Stephen Fry
himself (though I would hunt down such a wretch and punch him till he
bled). There was a thick bloke sat about three chairs to my right. How do
I know he was thick? Was I prejudging him based on his shell suit? The
cigarette behind his ear? The accent? Well no. Not this time. This time I
had proof that he was thick. Countdown was on and it was the numbers game.
Oddly I am much better at the numbers game than the letters game. Feeling
under the weather enough to be at the doctor’s meant I wasn’t paying much
attention to the show. I’d read the same page of my book about four times
and had given in to the numbness in my brain.
100 4 3 10 8 6
Those were the numbers given and the total generated by the machine was
718.
Thirty seconds passed by. Ten of those for me and (by their putting down
of pencils) the contestants to solve and check their answer and twenty to
star vacantly and slightly smugly around.
“702” said the thick bloke.
“That’s good” said he wife / girlfriend / other.
I challenge anyone to dispute my claim that this man is thick.
4+3=7
7x100=700
10+8=18
700+18=718
But you already knew
that.
Young families with children have to visit the doctor. That’s fine.
Encouraging that child to be creative is good. However, draw in your mind
a plan of the waiting room. Looking from above, the parents were sat
bottom left. The children’s area is top right. The child stomps off
(literally stomps – such small feet making such a lot of noise is hard to
equate) to draw something. Child stomps back two minutes later with some
scribble. The parents coo over how good it is. But – and here is the crux
of my loathing – they critique it. They told the child it needed more of
this and that. The child stomps off to the crayons. Two minutes later it
stomps back (I couldn’t be bothered finding out if it was a boy or girl,
it didn’t seem to matter). The parents again offer helpful advice. Stomp
off, stomp back. More advice. Stomp off, stomp back. More advice and so
on. Add to that squeals and shouts back and forth between seated parents
and drawing child and you can see how they were grating like a contestant
at the world cheese-shredding championship.
Time is pressing so I can only give the briefest mentions to the school
girl who kept sniffing her armpits, the pensioner with the over active
mobile phone and the Channel 4 show where a pretentious couple went round
the French coast looking for a house suitable for her to use as a
beautification parlour.
I spent about ten minutes with the doctor. I remember miming my brain
exploding (with sound effects) and him examining the backs of my eyes for
the cause of my dizziness. He also told me not to worry and that I wasn’t
a hypochondriac which makes me sure he’s hiding something from me.
Probably something terribly serious.
|
